Albert Camus's spare, laconic masterpiece about a murder in Algeria is famous for having diagnosed, with an almost scientific clarity, that condition of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion that characterized so much of twentieth-century life. With the excitement of a perfectly executed thriller and the force of a parable, The Stranger explores what Camus termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."

Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.